How much should you earn?

How much do you earn per month (gross monthly salary)?

  • Under R 10 000

    Votes: 67 18.9%
  • R 10 000 - R 15 000

    Votes: 50 14.1%
  • R 15 000 - R 20 000

    Votes: 65 18.4%
  • R 20 000 - R 30 000

    Votes: 66 18.6%
  • R 30 000 - R 40 000

    Votes: 46 13.0%
  • R 40 000 - R 50 000

    Votes: 21 5.9%
  • R 50 000 - R 75 000

    Votes: 27 7.6%
  • Over R 75 000

    Votes: 12 3.4%

  • Total voters
    354
It's worse than that.
My fiancee and I are looking at buying a house and with a combined income of R40K (gross) the max we'll qualify for is about R900K over a 20 year period at prime.
R900K for a 2 or 3 bedroom, free standing house, in a safe area is a bargain around the JHB, PTA area. We're still looking ...

That's 25K for me and 15K for her with a combined take home pay of about R25K.
The bond repayments are R12K per month, add rates and taxes, water and lights, food, etc. and you're up to about R14K per month ... just for a house.
Add R2500 for food, R1000 for house and car insurance, R4100 for repayments on two cheap cars, R3000 for fuel and suddenly you're up at R24600!
Now we have to figure out what to do with the remaining R400.

So in my opinion you'd need about R30K+ take home salary to survive in an average/cheap house with two kids and two cheap cars.
That means no eating out, no DSTV, no Internet connection, no spare money for investments/retirements ...

All this time I could not understand, why I am struggling on a big salary.
Just a note. Impossible to eat on just R2500 per month. In reality it is more like R4500 per month.... for 2 adults.
 
All this time I could not understand, why I am struggling on a big salary.
Just a note. Impossible to eat on just R2500 per month. In reality it is more like R4500 per month.... for 2 adults.

That's madness. For me two adults(22 and 19 year old) R2000 is enough. That's with buying some junk food too. Do you eat out every night or something?
 
That's madness. For me two adults(22 and 19 year old) R2000 is enough. That's with buying some junk food too. Do you eat out every night or something?

we hardly eat. Have to freeze food and buy in bulk to make it. I just don't know where the money goes. We cannot afford to eat out... ever.
 
I look at those figures and weep :(.

I'm in the under R10k category with a BCompt degree. I mostly do the internal IT at work [no formal qualifications in IT though].
 
All this time I could not understand, why I am struggling on a big salary.
Just a note. Impossible to eat on just R2500 per month. In reality it is more like R4500 per month.... for 2 adults.

my gf and i can easily survive on 2000k a month aswell for food. But my companies gives massive bonuses twice a year:)
 
I'm going to get a salary increase at the end of this month, it's a small increase but taking the economic climate that we are in, I think it's fair. But I am thinking of asking my employer to increase my salary even further, do you guys think that's wise?
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X